Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/400

388 all the world to reign in, bating only two or three hundred acres, and two or three houses in town or country. I will likewise, out of my special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, allow you to be in the right against all humankind, except myself, and to be never in the wrong but when you differ from me. You shall have a greater privilege in the third article of speaking your mind; which I shall graciously allow you now and then to do even to myself, and only rebuke you when it does not please me.

Madam, I am now got as far as your grace's letter, which having not read this fortnight (having been out of town, and not daring to trust myself with the carriage of it) the presumptuous manner in which you begin had slipped out of my memory. But I forgive you to the seventeenth line, where you begin to banish me for ever, by demanding me to answer all the good character some partial friends have given me. Madam, I have lived sixteen years in Ireland, with only an intermission of two summers in England; and consequently am fifty years older than I was at the queen's death, and fifty thousand times duller, and fifty million times more peevish, perverse, and morose; so that under these disadvantages I can only pretend to excel all your other acquaintance about some twenty bars length. Pray, madam, have you a clear voice? and will you let me sit at your left hand at least within three of you, for of two bad ears, my right is the best? My groom tells me that he likes your park, but your house is too little. Can the parson of the parish play at backgammon, and hold his tongue? is any one of your women a good nurse, if I should fancy myself